Articles Posted inFirst Amendment

Under the current statute, suits in Virginia for libel, slander, or “insulting words” can only be brought within one year from the time of publication. Earlier this month, delegate Dave Albo filed House Bill No. 1635, proposing that the Commonwealth increase the limitations period to two years, and providing further that in cases involving Internet defamation by anonymous tortfeasors, the statute of limitations be suspended (or “tolled”) upon a motion and showing of good cause. If the bill passes, it will make it a lot easier to identify and bring to justice those persons who use the Internet to conceal their identities while unleashing a barrage of false and harmful statements about another individual or business.

Statutes of limitation have been debated for hundreds of years. In a law review article written over 100 years ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. asked, “what is the justification for depriving a man of his rights, a pure evil as far as it goes, in consequence of the lapse of time?” In other words, why have statutes of limitation at all? Shouldn’t every wrong have a remedy? There are some who feel that claims should be resolved on their merits regardless of when they are brought, whereas others argue that untimely claims should be forever extinguished. Most states have reached a consensus that defamation claims should be limited to one or two years, primarily due to concerns about First Amendment principles and a desire to avoid the chilling of free speech.Continue reading

So you may have heard that environmental scientist Paul Brodeur is seeking $1 million in damages for libel, defamation, slander and false light against the movie studios behind 2013’s highly acclaimed film American Hustle. Why? Because according to him, the movie damaged his reputation by “attributing…a scientifically unsupportable statement” to him. Had this action been filed in Virginia rather than California, it would not likely go very far.

Here’s the scene: it’s the late 1970s or early 1980s, and the two characters played by Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence are arguing about the new microwave oven that just exploded in their kitchen:

Irving Rosenfeld: I told you not to put metal in the science oven! What did you do that for?

The case is Geloo v. Doe, decided June 23, 2014. Fairfax attorney Andaleeb Geloo filed a defamation action against various anonymous posters to the Fairfax Underground site and sought to uncover their identities by issuing subpoenas to Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and Cox Communications. At issue were statements referring to Ms. Geloo as a “run of the mill court appointed attorney” and a “fat Paki,” and a statement accusing Ms. Geloo herself as being the secret author of a discussion thread entitled “Andi Geloo – Bullshit Artist.”Continue reading

Courts grant temporary injunctions sparingly and only after the moving party has alleged and proved facts entitling it to relief. Injunctive relief generally is not available to prohibit the making of defamatory statements as prior restraints on speech violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Injunctions may sometimes be granted, however, where the defamatory words are made in the furtherance of the commission of another intentional tort. Care must be taken to ensure that any injunction is narrowly tailored to achieve the pin-pointed objective of the needs of the case, as prior restraints on speech are considered the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.

In Chevaldina v. R.K./FL Management, Inc., a Florida appellate court found that the trial court had abused its discretion in granting an injunction against defamatory speech. Irina Chevaldina was an unhappy former tenant of R.K. Management which owned and managed commercial properties in South Florida. When R.K. discovered that Ms. Chevaldina was the author of anonymous, unflattering blog posts about it, it added several tort claims to its already pending action for defamation per se and libel against the previously anonymous blogger. The tort claims included counts for tortious interference with contractual and advantageous business relationships.Continue reading

The First Amendment protects anonymous speech, including online reviews of products and services written by people using fake names. The right to anonymous speech, however, is not absolute. Defamatory speech, whether or not anonymous, is not entitled to protection, as there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact. If someone pretending to be a former customer writes a defamatory review on Yelp, Amazon, or some other consumer-review site, but doesn’t disclose his or her real name, how does the business owner go about identifying the individual so that the individual can be held accountable? The answer lies in Section 8.01-407.1 of the Code of Virginia, which sets forth a specific procedure for uncovering the identities of people who communicate anonymously over the Internet.

The proper application of this statute was recently discussed in Yelp v. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, a case arising out of Alexandria. As of October 2012, Yelp’s site contained seventy-five reviews about Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, many of them critical. Included among these reviews were assertions by anonymous authors claiming to have been charged for work never performed and claiming that “precious rugs were shrunk.” Hadeed sued the anonymous authors for defamation, alleging that the reviewers were never actual customers of Hadeed.

After filing the lawsuit, Hadeed promptly issued a subpoena duces tecum to Yelp, demanding the production of documents that would enable Hadeed to identify the authors of the allegedly defamatory reviews. Yelp objected, arguing that Hadeed had not complied with the requirements of Section 8.01-407.1. Hadeed revised its subpoena to comply with the statute, but Yelp continued to object and refused to comply. On a motion to compel compliance, the Circuit Court for the City of Alexandria held that Hadeed’s subpoena satisfied the requirements of both the statute and the First Amendment, and ordered Yelp to disclose the information. Yelp refused, and was held in contempt. It then appealed that ruling to the Virginia Court of Appeals (which has jurisdiction to consider appeals of civil contempt orders), arguing that the First Amendment requires a showing of merit on both the law and facts before a subpoena duces tecum to identify an anonymous speaker can be enforced. The Court of Appeals disagreed, holding in a case of first impression that Section 8.01-407.1 is not unconstitutional and that it alone provides the unmasking standard in Virginia.

To be actionable as libel, a statement must reasonably imply false and defamatory facts when read in context. Context is important because the setting of the speech makes its nature apparent and helps determine how its intended audience would have interpreted the statement. In some cases, a literally false statement will not be actionable because contextual factors demonstrate that the true meaning of the statement is something other than what the words alone might suggest. In other words, the statement that a plaintiff must prove false to prevail in a defamation case is not necessarily the literal phrase published but rather what a reasonable reader would have understood the author to have said. In Farah v. Esquire Magazine, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit discussed the importance of these principles in a case involving political satire.

Jerome Corsi is the popular author of several New York Times bestsellers and the book “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President” published by WND Books. Joseph Farah is the Editor and CEO of WND’s parent company, WorldNetDaily.com, a competitor of Esquire Magazine. On the day after “Where’s the Birth Certificate” was released, Esquire published an online article on “The Politics Blog” entitled “BREAKING: Jerome Corsi’s Birther Book Pulled from Shelves!” A copy of the Drudge Siren, a symbol of sensationalistic news, appeared above an image of the book’s cover. The article claimed that Farah had announced plans to recall and “pulp” the entire first run of the book and to refund purchaser’s money because three weeks earlier, Obama had produced his long form birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii. Later, Esquire published an update clarifying that the article was satirical, but the writer of the article referred to Corsi as an “execrable piece of shit” in an interview published on another online publication, The Daily Caller.

Farah and Corsi sued for defamation and other torts. According to the complaint, after the article was published, Farah received numerous requests for confirmation of the story and comment, and consumers began requesting refunds. The plaintiffs also claimed that they were attacked by book supporters and that book stores pulled the book from their shelves or refused to sell it. Farah and Corsi contended that Esquire only published the update after Farah indicated that he was exploring legal options and that the update was likewise false and defamatory. The district court granted Esquire’s motions to dismiss under both Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) and D.C.’s Anti-SLAPP Act, D.C. Code § 16-5501 et seq.

The First Amendment dictates that religious organizations are entitled to decide matters of church governance, faith and doctrine without state interference. Accordingly, as a general rule, courts may not hear disputes involving religious law, principle, doctrine, discipline, custom or administration. In what has come to be known as the “ecclesiastical abstention” doctrine, courts should normally abstain from adjudicating issues involving theological or spiritual judgment, or the internal governance of religious bodies. Courts will often classify the issue as one involving jurisdiction, noting that the religious bodies have exclusive jurisdiction over their own internal workings.

For example, the Supreme Court of Virginia once considered a church pastor’s defamation claim against a church deacon based on his statement that the pastor had “borrowed over $100,000 from believers and has not returned the money.” While an express or implied accusation of theft would normally be treated as defamation per se under Virginia law, the court declined to exercise jurisdiction on the ground that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment “divests a civil court of subject matter jurisdiction to consider a pastor’s defamation claims against a church and its officials.”

Still, courts may exercise jurisdiction over defamation actions involving religious organizations where “neutral principles of law” may be applied to resolve the dispute. The Supreme Court of South Carolina recently granted certiorari to consider the question of whether a pastor may use the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause to shield himself from defamation liability stemming from statements he made about the church’s trustees at a congregational meeting or whether the court could apply neutral principles of law to decide the case. The court found that “a tortfeasor is not shielded from liability simply by committing his torts within the walls of a church or under the guise of church governance.”

The District of Columbia’s anti-SLAPP act applies to actions that arise from an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest. It provides that if a party makes a prima facie showing that the case involves the type of claim to which the act applies, the court will dismiss the case–with prejudice–unless the responding party can demonstrate that the claim is likely to succeed on the merits. D.C. Code § 16-5502(a)-(b). Although there has been some uncertainty as to whether D.C.’s anti-SLAPP act applies in federal court, the emerging trend has been to find that it does. On September 27, 2013, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District of Columbia District Court found the statute applicable to a defamation lawsuit brought by Yasser Abbas and granted the defendant’s special motion to dismiss made under its terms.

Yasser Abbas is a wealthy businessman and political emissary for his father’s regime, the Palestinian Authority (“PA”). He sued Foreign Policy Group, LLC, and journalist Jonathan Schanzer for certain statements Schanzer made in an article he had written about the sons of the Palestinian president. The article was published in the “Argument” section of Foreign Policy Magazine and questioned whether the sons of the Palestinian president were “growing rich off their father’s system” and whether they had “enriched themselves at the expense of regular Palestinians” and U.S. taxpayers.

When the defendants responded with a motion to dismiss under the anti-SLAPP act, the first question was whether D.C.’s statute even applied in federal court, a question not yet decided by D.C.’s highest court. The issue boils down to whether the anti-SLAPP statute should be viewed as substantive or procedural, as federal courts sitting in diversity apply federal procedural laws but state substantive laws. Judge Sullivan looked to other circuits and found that many interpret similar state statutes as substantive and do apply them in federal diversity cases. Notably, the D.C. Circuit has upheld a district court decision denying a special motion to dismiss under the anti-SLAPP statute because it was not timely filed. Although that decision did not specifically hold that the anti-SLAPP statute was substantive, it implied as much. With this background, Judge Sullivan was persuaded that the anti-SLAPP law applies in federal court.

So your criminal record has been erased. Congratulations! Now you’re thinking about bringing a libel action against the news agencies who published stories documenting your arrest, because the local “deemer” statute states that you are deemed never to have been arrested and those embarrassing articles are still available online. Good idea? Have those articles, truthful at the time they were first published, become defamatory in light of recent events? Not according to a recent federal-court opinion out of Connecticut, which rejected Lorraine Martin’s claims for libel, false light, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy in a case she filed against Hearst Corporation and other media outlets.

Lorraine Martin and her two sons were arrested in August 2010 and charged with possession of narcotics, drug paraphernalia and a controlled substance. Several news outlets published brief accounts of the arrest and charges in print and online. The charges were dismissed in January 2012 and qualified for erasure under Connecticut’s erasure statute which provides that thirteen months after a criminal charge is dismissed, the charge is erased and the person charged is deemed to have never been arrested. Ms. Martin asserted that because she qualified for erasure and had been deemed to have never been arrested, the defendants’ statements became false and defamatory. Ms. Martin asked the publications to remove the online articles and, when they refused, sued them.

Precepts of statutory construction dictate that the meaning of a statute be ascertained from its text and its relationship to other statutes. If the text is plain and unambiguous, the court will not consider extra-textual evidence. The “Erasure of Criminal Records” statute requires that court records and police and prosecutor records be erased following final judgment in a case in which the defendant is acquitted or the charge is dismissed or where a nolle prosequi is entered. Read as a whole, the statute concerns only the records of courts and law enforcement agencies and imposes requirements on them. For example, the statute prohibits the court clerk from disclosing information about erased charges. The court found that nothing in the statute suggests that the legislature intended to impose requirement on persons who work outside of courts or law enforcement.

Well-known climate scientist Michael Mann made good on his threat to sue the National Review and columnist Mark Steyn for defamation based on statements made online questioning Mann’s global warming research. In response, the defendants filed a special motion to dismiss under D.C.’s anti-SLAPP statute, arguing that the online statements were made in furtherance of the right of advocacy on an issue of public interest. The court found that the anti-SLAPP statute did apply but nevertheless denied the motion.

Mann is a professor of meteorology and the Director of the Early System Science Center at Penn State. He is well known for his research on global warming and has published papers and books on the subject. The University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) exchanged emails with Mann which were later misappropriated. In one email, a CRU scientist referred to Mann’s “nature trick” of adding in real temperatures for the last twenty years and from 1961 to “hide the decline.” Upon discovery of the emails, the University of East Anglia investigated the matter and concluded that the honesty and rigor of the CRU scientists was not in doubt but that the email referencing Mann’s “nature trick” was misleading.

In 2010, Penn State initiated an investigation of Mann and the CRU emails. The investigatory committee was comprised entirely of Penn State faculty members. Based on an interview with Mann, the committee cleared Mann of three of four charges against him. The last charge involved an allegation that Mann’s research might deviate from accepted norms. The committee interviewed an MIT professor who was critical of Mann’s work and later expressed dismay with the scope of the investigation and the committee’s analysis of the CRU emails.

The results of all client matters depend on a variety of factors unique to each matter. Past successes do not predict or guarantee future successes.

The Virginia Defamation Law Blog is not intended as and should not be interpreted as legal advice. Rather, it is intended solely as a general discussion of legal principles. You should not rely on or take action based on this communication without first presenting all relevant details to a competent attorney in your jurisdiction and then receiving the attorney's individualized advice for you. The opinions expressed here are not intended to, nor do they create, any attorney-client relationship.